Saturday, April 20, 2013

Canicula

11:00 a.m.  Bijou Art Cinemas
Tickets: $6 all
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Canicula poster

Mexico, 2012

Directed by Jose Álvarez

Screenplay by Jose Álvarez and Sebastián Hofmann

Cinematography by Sebastián Hofmann, Pedro González Rubio, and Fernanda Romandía

Editing by Sebastián Hofmann, Jose Álvarez

Music by Martín Delgado, Tomás Pérez, Esteban González Juárez

Running Time: 65 minutes

Official site Trailer

 

 

Canicula stillIn Spanish, the term “canicula” refers to the forty most torrid days of the year. For the Totonac people, this period, known as the “days of the bleeding sun,” is marked with significant rites and ceremonies. A captivating ethnographic work, Canicula is a study of the rich cultural heritage and traditions of the Totonac people of Veracruz, Mexico, who have resided in this region for thousands of years. Beautifully photographed, this documentary features rare footage of the Totonac’s “voladores” ritual (“the flying dance”), named an Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO.

Canicula stillObservation is key in this visual journey to a small village in Zapotal, Santa Cruz, where preparations are underway for the annual rituals. Through an intimate and patient approach, director Jose Álvarez emphasizes the importance of tradition in the preservation of culture and identity. Álvarez concentrates on two areas of the community’s life: the elegant ceramics produced by a cadre of skilled women, led by Hermelinda Santes, and the religious rite of voladores, led by maestro Esteban Gonzalez. Contributing to recent trends in Mexican documentary filmmaking, Canícula follows an anthropological approach that aims to capture the tension between tradition and the creeping forces of modernity. Critically acclaimed Mexican director Alejandro González Iñarritu describes Canícula as “exciting because it is true, beautiful, and poetic.” One of the film’s cinematographers is Pedro Gonzalez-Rubio, the acclaimed documentary director whose films Alamar and Inori screen on Sunday, April 21.


AL OTRO LADO

With guest speaker Patricia Zimmermann and director Natalia Almada (via Skype)
1:00 p.m.  Bijou Art Cinemas
Tickets: $6 all
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Al Otro Lado poster

Mexico, 2005

Directed by Natalia Almada

Screenplay by Natalia Almada

Cinematography by Chuy Chavez

Editing by Natalia Almada

Music by Los Tigres del Norte, Chalino Sanchez, Jenni Rivera, Jessie Morales

Running Time: 70 minutes

Official site Trailer

 

 

Al Otro Lado stillTold using Mexico’s 200-year-old tradition of corrido music, Al Otro Lado  (To the Other Side) (2005) is a documentary that tells the human story behind drug smuggling and illegal immigration from Sinaloa, Mexico, to the streets of South Central Los Angeles. Magdiel, a 23-year-old fisherman and aspiring composer, dreams of a better life in the United States (“the other side”). Coming from the drug capital of Mexico, he faces two choices to improve his life: to traffic drugs or to illegally cross the border into the United States, where even menial jobs can support families and communities left behind. His experiences are rendered through the corrido, troubadour-like ballads through which migrants create their own form of cultural belonging.

Al Otro Lado stillAl Otro Lado is director, producer, and filmmaker Natalia Almada’s documentary debut, which aired as part of PBS‘s POV series in 2006. It received the Special Jury Prize and the Best Editing Award at the Cine Ceará Film Festival. “My family has lived in Sinaloa for six generations, but it was my generation that saw how free trade with our wealthy neighbor changed our economy and culture,” says Almada. “For over 200 years corrido songs have been the musical underground newspapers, and today tell of drug traffickers and illegal immigrants—people who have beaten the system and provided jobs and much-needed infrastructure to rural communities in a struggling economy.” Jon Pareles writes in The New York Times: “The documentary is handsomely filmed, whether in sun-drenched landscapes or crowded nightclubs. It is not a history of corridos, which have roots that reach back to medieval songs; it is a glimpse of art running parallel to daily life.”


DIM SUM WARRIORS

With Colin Goh and Yen Yen Woo
1:00 p.m.  Eugene Public Library (100 W. 10th Ave.), Bascom-Tykesom Room   FREE

Dim Sum Warriors posterFilmmakers and comic book creators Yen Yen Woo and Colin Goh (who are also, respectively, an education professor and lawyer) will discuss, project, and perform stories from their comic book iPad app, Dim Sum Warriors.

Dim Sum Warriors is an all-ages, crazy martial arts adventure comedy about kung fu fighting Chinese snacks. Growing up in Singapore, Woo and Goh’s families had two weekend rituals in common: going for a dim sum brunch, and then watching kung fu movies. Kung fu fighting dumplings were thus their inevitable creative offspring.

They also wanted to give their daughter a sense of both her ethnic Chinese as well as her American heritage, so Yen Yen used her education background to design the comic as an interactive app that could also support learning English and Chinese. In the app, you can do cool things like tap word balloons to change the text from English to Chinese and back, or summon translations complete with hanyu pinyin pronunciation guides, as well as activate audio performances of the dialogue.

Rob Salkowitz, author of Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture, writes: “it’s hilarious. . . The creativity and ingenuity of Dim Sum Warriors is matched only by its market potential. It not only has the usual entertainment reach of a kid-oriented manga title, it has built-in value for parents and educators around the world, particularly overseas Chinese in English-speaking countries who want their kids to benefit from mastering the world’s two most widely-spoken languages.”

Cosponsored with CABA, East Asian Languages and Literatures, Asian Studies,  and Comics Studies Program.

Official site

 


SINGAPORE DREAMING

With guest directors Colin Goh and Yen Yen Woo
4:00 p.m.  Bijou Art Cinemas
Tickets: $6 all
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Singapore Dreaming poster

Singapore, 2006

Directed by Woo Yen Yen and Colin Goh

Screenplay by Woo Yen Yen, Colin Goh, Woffles Wu

Cinematography by Martina Radwan

Editing by Rachel Kittner

Music by Sydney Tan

Cast: Richard Low, Alice Lim, Serene Chen, Yeo Yann Yann, Lim Yu-Beng, Dick Su

Running Time: 105 minutes

Official site Trailer

 

 

Singapore Dreaming still Heavily in debt, patriarch Loh Poh Huat can’t help but feel bitter irony whenever he has to perform his job as a lawyer’s clerk. At the end of his career and frustrated by the gulf between his middle class dreams and his working class reality, he takes his feelings of failure and envy out on his family. So when Poh Huat suddenly wins two million dollars in the lottery, the Lohs start believing that maybe this windfall will deliver them from their struggles.

In 2006, Yen Yen Woo and Colin Goh wrote, directed, and produced this, their second feature, which played at numerous film festivals worldwide and also won some prestigious awards: the Montblanc Screenwriters Award at the 54th San Sebastian International Film Festival; the Best Asian/Middle Eastern Film Award at the 20th Tokyo International Film Festival; and the Audience Award for Narrative Feature at the 30th Asian-American International Film Festival.

Singapore Dreaming stillVariety praised it as “a graceful satire on Western capitalism in the East,” while the San Francisco Film Society described Singapore Dreaming as a “delightful story of family ties, status anxiety, and a rapidly changing metropolis. Boasting an ensemble cast of the highest order, this comedy of errors recalls the early films of Ang Lee and the work of Taiwanese director Edward Yang.”

Cosponsored with CAPS, Asian Studies, East Asian Languages and Literatures, Asian Studies.


Alien Boy: The Life and Death of James Chasse

With guest filmmaker Brian Lindstrom
6:30 p.m. and 9:15 p.m.  Bijou Art Cinemas
Tickets: $6 sr/stu; $8 general
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Alien Boy poster

USA, 2013

Directed by Brian Lindstrom

Screenplay by Matt Davis

Cinematography by John Campbell

Editing by Andrew Saunderson

Music by Charlie Campbell

Running Time: 90 minutes

Official site Trailer

 

Alien Boy stillOn September 17, 2006, James Chasse was stopped by three police officers in Portland, Oregon, before a dozen eyewitnesses who watched in horror as the officers tackled, beat, kicked, and tased James until he lay motionless on the pavement. He was not suspected of a crime, nor had he committed one. He died in the custody of the Portland police about two hours later.

Alien Boy: The Life and Death of James Chasse takes a deep look at Chasse’s life, uncovering his suburban childhood, involvement in Portland’s early punk music scene, the teenage onset of his schizophrenia, the peeling away of friendships and opportunities as his illness progressed into his adulthood, and his ability to carve out an independent existence despite his mental illness. The film examines how society treats mental illness and questions the practices of institutionalization. Using interviews, personal writings, archival footage, official documents, and depositions, the film explores James Chasse’s life and the actions and decisions that led to his death. What emerges is an intimate and complex story of one man’s life, the struggle for his family to find justice after his tragic death, and a city and a system grappling with accountability.

Made as a Kickstarter passion project, Alien Boy took over six years to create with support from over 1,500 people. As a project of the Mental Health Association of Portland, all revenue generated by the film goes to support the nonprofit advocacy organization. AP Kryza of Willamette Week was among the many critics who raved about the film after its recent Portland International Film Festival premiere: “Infuriating, tragic, heartbreaking, and incendiary in equal measures, Portland filmmaker Brian Lindstrom’s Alien Boy: The Life and Death of James Chasse is a documentary that plays out like a horror film and leaves you absolutely breathless.”


ADRENALINE FILM PROJECT Screening and Afterparty!

Hosted by Leigh Kilton-Smith, Omar Naim, and Rom Alejandro
9:30 p.m.   PLC 180 on the University of Oregon campus   1415 Kincaid Street
Tickets: $7 stu/srs; $10 general
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Come see the results of Eugene’s fourth Adrenaline Film Project. On Wednesday, April 17, several teams of filmmakers will be assigned a genre and given a line of dialogue and prop to be incorporated into their productions. For the next seventy-two hours, they will pitch, write, shoot, and edit their films, turning them in at 5:00 p.m. on Saturday, April 20. The mentors who guide them through the seventy-two-hour process (Rom Alejandro, Omar Naim, and Leigh Kilton-Smith) will host the films’ premieres, and the assembled crowd will vote for an Audience Award. A jury of film professionals will also give one film its top prize, the Kalb Award, and the mentors will select a third prize winner.  Following the screening, your ticket will get you into the celebratory Adrenaline Afterparty, featuring music and refreshments in the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art!

Official site